WAR OF THE VANQUISHED: A Polish Diplomat in Vietnam

by Mieczyslaw Maneli ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 29, 1971

It was a coup for the West when this high-ranking Polish diplomat defected. Until his ouster from the government during the 1968 ""anti-Zionist"" purge, Maneli spent five years in Vietnam (1954-55 and 1962-64) as head of Poland's delegation to the International Control Commission overseeing the Geneva Accords -- the second Vietnam tour was primarily to monitor Sino-Soviet relations for the Polish government. In this memoir of his Vietnam experiences, Maneli found Chinese ideological bluster and diplomatic crudities unbearable, the Russians somewhat better, the North Vietnamese excessively bureaucratic. In the course of duty he conferred with Chou En-lai, Pham Van Dong, Prince Sihanouk, President Diem, and the major Western ambassadors in Saigon, and participated in two international imbroglios. The first developed when the Chinese and North Vietnamese demanded that he push charges of American chemical warfare to counter the Canadian-Indian charge of Northern infiltration into the South. He balked, claiming that there was no evidence, which seems odd, since the U.S. was probably carrying out defoliation at the time; even before his defection, Maneli was remarkably uncritical of the United States. Zipping back and forth between Saigon and Hanoi, he became a courier in informal talks between Diem and Ho, an intercourse which ended with the CIA coup against Diem. Urbane, witty, a social democrat and self-styled humanist, Maneli reached his post not through the party bureaucracy but his World War II partisan activities and legal proficiency. His writing, which includes sizable excerpts from his journal, is full of diplomatic speculation and efforts to define, not the political context of the Vietnam war, but his personal moral values. The book is useful not so much for descriptions of particular events but as a visa into the mentality of an interesting diplomat.

Pub Date: Sept. 29, 1971

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Row

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1971

Categories: NONFICTION